It's not always just the twins that get "half" a gift - my mother did this for my younger sister & I until I went off to college & got married, or so it seems.

A belt would be bought for us to share (fashionable item of the year) - but Mom would buy the size between her size, my size, and sometime Mom's size. It fit none of us... Or they'd buy one book of a series for me, one book of the same series for her, and we'd have to scrounge up the missing book in the trilogy (the one between her copy and my copy) from the library (if we were lucky) to find out how the danged thing got from #1 to #3!

I really tried not to make my kids "share" things - but VorGuy had fewer issues sharing things with his brother, so he kept insisting on getting ONE game system and then they got to pick their own games. Except HE wanted to watch tv in the living room, so the game system was set up in one bedroom....where they couldn't easily share it.

I know what NOT to do in the future - if there isn't a family room for the kids to play video games in, then two hand held game systems are the way to go, not one big game system when they don't like the same games or the age difference is enough to keep them from playing the same games against each other.

Do they give individual gifts ? or do they give one gift between them ( assuming they are old enough ) . I had some classmates who ould give one gift between them.... their mother said it was too expensive for them to give individual gifts to people.

My policy for any gift giving occasion for friends is 1 gift given per invitation unless it is for a twin birthday party. So if we get an invite that's for both boys to attend a single kid party, they give one gift. If it's an invite for a twin party (that's for both twins) we give one gift to each twin unless I find a larger joint gift that I know both twins would enjoy. When we get to the point where their twin friends start to have separate birthday parties, then it will still be one gift per invitation. But then again, I'd do that if I had kids of different ages invited to the same party.

But if the boys were invited to just the party for just one twin (say with our friends that have a boy/girl combo & they only went to the boy twin party) then I would not get a gift for the girl twin. If it's a set of twins that we are really close to then I might bend the rule but only if the whole family were very good friends. Otherwise I wouldn't feel obligated to send a gift for the other twin who the party was not for. Even if it was a boy/boy or girl/girl twin group.

I don't think that any of my friends got a gift for my brother once we started having our own parties around 1st grade or so unless they were really close to both of us & even then it didn't bother either of us. Even though we might have the party together (i.e. we both wanted to have a skating party one year) the guest lists, cakes, etc were separate. Make sense?

Given that they have been jointly invited to six parties already this year (with more to come!), we'd go broke fairly quickly if I let the boys each give a gift to a party they are attending together. Thank goodness I discovered Five Below last month! The only exception are their two cousins who get more than one gift but since it's family I want to splurge

The bigger issue is when it's family not making the effort to see them as separate people & give them a gift that can only be used by one. If we got the t-shirt gift from a non-close friend or family member, I'd probably roll my eyes internally, thank the giver & go find a matching gift. If it was from a close family member I'd probably pull them aside & whack them with a clue-by-4 upside the head a few times.

I love being an only child. I got all my own toys, all my own gifts...very nice set up.

Partner's siblings are considerably older then her (her sister is 8 years older, her brother is 10 years older) so she didn't really have to share toys either. What 5 year old is interested in and what a 13 and 15 year old are interested in are usually very different. But her siblings reported for years being given gifts to share. Even though they had 2 years between them and were different genders. One Christmas a relative bought them the Barbie dream house, several new Barbies, two Barbie cars, and a decent wardrobe for the doll too. For both her brother and sister to share. Neither of them really had any interest in Barbie.

Partner says the same relative did try to pull off the "share this piece of clothing" with her and her sister. It was apparently a nice purse and she figured the girls would just "take turns", of course partner was like 10 and her sister was 18. So her sister got it (Partner was fine with this) and her mother called and patiently explained that there was an 8 year age difference and there weren't a lot of things the girls were going to share. Especially clothing. And her 10 year old daughter didn't need a nice leather purse. Because she's 10.

As someone who is a twin, I would say, "I understand that it's easy to think of Sally and Molly (making up names) as one unit because they were born to the same mom at the same time. However, they are definitely separate people, and if you can't respect that by getting them separate gifts, don't give them gifts at all."it's hurtful to them when they don't get their own gift like the others do".

I think it's pretty similar for kids who aren't twins but are close enough to share interests, in that after the first few days, the toys generally get shared and nobody knows who they were for originally. I find that tends to be the case, with the rare exception of a special toy that one kid really gloms onto. But most of the toys, unless they are really age-specific (only my oldest uses the woodworking kit, only the toddler plays with the Elmo stuff), just get played with by everybody.

I love the King Solomon comparison.

This is not specific to twins but, do the kids really not know who they originally were for?

My sisters and I all have birthdays within the same week (in different years) and we pooled our toys (they almost all lived in my baby sister's room, for a variety of reasons) but we were WELL aware of what belongs to whom.In fact, my dad got out the Fisher Price record player for my daughter on Thanksgiving and mentioned he didn't know which of us it belonged to--3 of us said in unison "Dawbs". And we all knew that the hobby horse was baby sis's.

(We didn't tend to mind group gifts--although the older we got, the more it became an issue--we had some shared-purchase clothing that we debated fiercely about when it came time for some of us to do vacations/college/etc)

I think it's pretty similar for kids who aren't twins but are close enough to share interests, in that after the first few days, the toys generally get shared and nobody knows who they were for originally. I find that tends to be the case, with the rare exception of a special toy that one kid really gloms onto. But most of the toys, unless they are really age-specific (only my oldest uses the woodworking kit, only the toddler plays with the Elmo stuff), just get played with by everybody.

I love the King Solomon comparison.

This is not specific to twins but, do the kids really not know who they originally were for?

My sisters and I all have birthdays within the same week (in different years) and we pooled our toys (they almost all lived in my baby sister's room, for a variety of reasons) but we were WELL aware of what belongs to whom.In fact, my dad got out the Fisher Price record player for my daughter on Thanksgiving and mentioned he didn't know which of us it belonged to--3 of us said in unison "Dawbs". And we all knew that the hobby horse was baby sis's.

(We didn't tend to mind group gifts--although the older we got, the more it became an issue--we had some shared-purchase clothing that we debated fiercely about when it came time for some of us to do vacations/college/etc)

Well, it probably depends on the item, really. With the dolls? For the most part, after a while, nobody really knows which doll belonged to who anymore. Same with the stuffed animals. The exceptions are the ones that were really special to a kid, or that were bought within the last year or so. There are definitely a few of these (especially stuffed animals for my oldest, as she's a big stuffed animal fan, whereas the second is a big doll fan).

A lot of toys are sort of like... sets. Like my girls have these Stella Squeak toys. They have little plastic houses and furniture, and the characters are these little toy anthropomorphic mice. One kid got one house, one kid got another. Then there were various smaller sets. The kids *sort* of remember who got each house, but nobody remembers for any of the smaller sets or the mouse characters. LEGOs, of course, all end up in the LEGO bin once they've been put together a time or two.

And there are many toys that, while they *do* remember who it belonged to, they're no longer possessive of it after a while. My oldest *longed* for this Rapunzel doll back when she was 3. She finally got it for... maybe Christmas when she was about to turn 5? So she had wanted it for something like 2 years. Now she's about to turn 7, and she doesn't mind if a sister plays with it, although if you ask the girls, they know who it belongs to. Jenny will refer to it as "Emily's Rapunzel doll," but she'll still play with it without Emily objecting.

We have a set of tiny little princess dolls with removable clothing. These were Emily's favorite toys in the whole world, once, and a bunch of them were Christmas/birthday presents. I doubt she even remembers. At most, she might remember the one that she bought last, because she bought it with her first savings from her allowance.

Charlotte tends to claim any toy she wants to play with as hers, "From Grammy and Grandpap!" She doesn't know what she's talking about. Half the stuff she tries to claim as hers was Emily's when Emily was a toddler. Emily, of course, has grown out of Elmo, so she doesn't mind Charlotte taking the stuff over... but sometimes it's a point of contention between Jenny and Charlotte and neither, obviously, has a strong claim to it.

I do find, though, that when stuff is new, it's helpful to know whose is whose. For instance, one year, my mom bought all three of the oldest a Pascal toy (a chameleon from Tangled). I ended up marking them (a dot with a Sharpie under the tongue) so I could tell which each belonged to. Partly because they'd find one, not know whose it was, and fight over it. Partly because if we knew *whose* was missing, we had a better chance of figuring out where it went.

I think, though, that the memories fade with time and interest. My kids are still little enough that after a few years, they aren't interested in the same kinds of toys. So they don't really remember that it was theirs or even care. I could see caring more if they were older, and the toys were older and thus being interesting and desired for longer.